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East Africa Delegation Established SND Missionaries Prepare Local African Sisters for Leadership
Sisters of Notre Dame of the United States
SND USA
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 A Letter from the SND USA Provincial Team
2-7 East Africa Delegation Established SND Missionaries Prepare Local African Sisters for Leadership 8-9 Papua New Guinea 10-14 Ministering to the Sick and Vulnerable Across the U.S. 15 Meet Air Force Veteran and SND Associate Sue Willard
16-17 Make Your Life a Sacrifice of Praise
18 Sister Mary Frances Taymans Retires as National Sponsorship and Network O ce Executive Director
19 SND National Sponsorship and Network O ce
Executive Director Appointed 20 An A ordable Way to Make a Big Impact 21 SND USA 2021 Jubilarians
22 SND USA Launches National Website
LETTER FROM SND USA PROVINCIAL TEAM
This spring, Sisters of Notre Dame around the globe celebrated the installation of the first national African leadership team to head the East Africa Delegation. This inspiring step forward was made possible through decades of work by SND missionaries from the United States, India, and Germany who came to Africa with a vision to prepare local African sisters for leadership. We stand in awe of God’s continuing work through our congregation.
In this issue of SND USA magazine, readers will also learn about the transformative work of Sister Rose Bernard Groth, SND, who served as a missionary in Papua New Guinea for more than 40 years. Despite being held at gunpoint and facing unknown risks, Sister Rose Bernard reached out to a local population of AIDS victims, o ering them shelter, health care, and compassion while many in the country called for their deaths.
A continued priority of SND USA is healthcare ministry. Sisters of Notre Dame in Covington, Kentucky work in leadership roles at St. Claire HealthCare, the largest rural hospital in Northeastern Kentucky, and at St. Charles Community, an eldercare facility including adult day care, cottages, senior apartments and more. Notre Dame Village, in Chardon, Ohio is thriving with its independent and supportive residences for seniors. In Toledo, Ohio, SNDs are engaged in pastoral care and other ministries for their aging population. And in downtown Los Angeles, California, Sister Judeen Julier enjoys serving as a chaplain at California Hospital. Hear from these sisters who joyfully serve this vulnerable population.
We continue to pray for the safety of you and your loved ones as the worldwide pandemic slowly diminishes. Thank you for your prayers and continued support of our ministries.
Gratefully,
East Africa Delegation
Established
On May 24, 2015 in Arusha, Tanzania, the Sisters of Notre Dame’s mission in Uganda joined the SND missions in Tanzania and Kenya to form the new Holy Spirit General Delegation, or East Africa Delegation. Just six years later, in May 2021, the first fully national African leadership team was installed to lead the East Africa Delegation. These pioneer sisters are:
Sister Christine Syombua Ndolo,
Delegation Superior
Sister Margaret Kathambi Mbuba,
Assistant Delegation Superior and Councilor
Sister Elizabeth Wanza Mulako,
Councilor
Sister Rozaria Katusabe,
Councilor
Sister Mary Gladness Shayo,
Councilor
Sister Therese Marie Nabakka,
Delegation Treasurer
Sister Teopista Nabugwawo,
Delegation Secretary
This new African leadership team represents the foresight and the fulfillment of years of mission by American, Indian, German, and Brazilian SNDs to provide African sisters with the educational and experiential framework needed to successfully identify, lead, and expand outreach services in their native country.
Sister Christine Syombua Ndolo, the new Delegation Superior, says, “I am excited to begin this new chapter in our evolution and am looking forward to many new members joining us. My biggest desire is to see our delegation become self-sustainable. When and how we attain it is what I shall work, together with my team, to figure out.”
The missionary focus, to educate impoverished children and teach women skills which empower their lives, drives the East Africa Delegation. Paramount to the mission is continuing to invite young African women to follow in the current East Africa Delegation model and assume additional leadership roles within their native lands. Perhaps Sister Margaret Droege describes the East Africa Delegation best in her book: “We were Ugandans, Kenyans, Germans and Americans. There were inhabitants from Tanzania and India as well as travelers from Rome, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.”
A historic look back: The Great Commission
Jesus Christ instructed his disciples to spread the gospel to all the nations of the world. This “Great Commission” has been integral to the Sisters of Notre Dame mission since the congregation’s founding in Coesfeld, Germany in
1850. The Coesfeld sisters developed a flourishing educational ministry that spread to 30 locations within 20 years. Their work was thwarted when the “Kulturkampf” laws of the 1870s expelled sisters from Prussia, the leading state of the German Empire. Faced with the choice of either abandoning their vocation or leaving their homeland, the Sisters of Notre Dame sought a new mission field in the United States. Since arriving in America in 1874, the congregation continued to expand its reach from Cleveland to Covington, Kentucky in 1874; Toledo, Ohio in 1877; and Los Angeles, California in 1924. And like their founding sisters of Germany, a new wave of SNDs felt led by the Holy Spirit to expand their mission field beyond the United States. “This was radical thinking at the time,” Sister Marie Manning, SND, former Global Missions Coordinator, Chardon explains. “This was before other religious congregations from the Cleveland Diocese started any foreign missions.” The SND congregation anxiously waited and prayed for opportunities to found international missions.
Mission work begins in INDIA
The opportunity to establish a SND mission in India came in 1949 when the Bishop of Patna, India, invited Sisters of Notre Dame from the United States to educate children and provide much needed health care to the impoverished town of Jamalpur, Bihar. Sisters St. Thomas Fitzgerald, Magdela Schae er, Lauretta Thompson, Joella Luebbers, Maris Geiger and Kieran Seubert answered the call – chosen from more than one hundred sisters who volunteered to go. After a one-month ocean crossing, they landed in Bombay, India on October 20, 1949. Here was a land and culture completely unknown to them. Back then, as today, only two percent of India’s population was Christian.
“Our sisters immediately began teaching in an already-established grade school and assumed the school’s administration,” Sister Marie describes. “A year later, they began a small clinic on the back porch of what served as their convent, treating such diseases as malaria and tuberculosis as well as local health concerns like snake bites.” Early
letters from these sisters describe such challenges as adjusting to di erent foods, travel and language di culties, and even keeping doors and windows closed from bands of roaming monkeys.
- Mark 16:15
continued on page 4
Sister Rashmi with the Maasai people in Kenya.
East Africa Delegation Established
continued from page 3
Over time, elementary and high schools were added across India. Soon, a SND clinic was caring for thousands annually. Hundreds of young Indian women heard God’s call to join the SND congregation where they eventually took leadership roles in existing SND schools, clinics, and other outreach ministries.
Sister Laurette Kramer, of Chardon, Ohio arrived in Jamalpur, India in 1960. She worked as a classroom teacher and administrator at Notre Dame Academy in Patna. Additionally, Sister Laurette served as a counselor, director of teacher education, mentor and friend to countless sisters and colleagues. As co-founder of the prestigious Campus School of the Agricultural University, Pantnagar, she laid a solid foundation for its future growth and success.
Sister Tessy Thomas, SND, Provincial Superior of the Patna, India Province, eulogized Sister Laurette years later: “For 30 years Sister Laurette spent time in India as a missionary, educator and sister to us. She was significant for the development of Indian sisters. She radiated a vibrant enthusiasm and zest for living, for getting involved in ministry and for sharing her gifts. Sister Laurette brought her educational expertise and beauty of the Notre Dame heritage. After adjusting to life in India, Sister Laurette came to appreciate the Indian people, their deep spirituality, and rich traditions, which led her to immerse herself in this culture and make it her own.”
Today, more than 300 Indian Sisters of
Notre Dame are serving in their native country, educating women and children, teaching skills that empower women, delivering health care, and working in various social ministries. They are impacting their own culture and elevating their own society.
SND missions expand to Africa
Just as Sisters of Notre Dame across the United States served as missionaries in India, Indian sisters responded to the Great Commission, sending their sisters as missionaries to Africa. In 1992, the Sisters of Notre Dame of Patna answered an invitation to open a mission in Tanzania, Africa, where the population is 50 percent Muslim and 50 percent Christian. One year later, Brazilian Sisters of Notre Dame founded a second mission in Mozambique.
Sister Joell Overman, SND Kentucky, Superior General for the global SND congregation at the time of the first Africa mission, polled all provincials at a General Conference in India in 1990 to garner worldwide support before deciding to begin missions in Africa. She says, “Each province was asked to indicate their contribution to opening a mission in Africa, either through personnel, financial support, or prayer. For instance, India was able to provide personnel initially, Europe provided funding and later personnel.”
Sister Joell adds, “It exemplifies our concept of ‘plant a tree you will never sit under’ – the premise of getting missions started and training African sisters who can take over and determine what needs to be addressed in their own native land.”
In 1995 Sisters of Notre Dame from Kentucky and California joined together to establish a mission in Uganda. Sister Margaret Droege, of Covington, KY, writes in
- Sisters Judith Averbeck, Covington, KY
her book, Approaching Holy Ground, “We came to share, to learn, to live with the people of Buseesa, a virtually unknown village in the bush area of the Kibaale District of Uganda. So many things surprised the sisters: the deep faith and friendliness of the people, their welcoming spirit, their giving from the little they had, and their great desire for education for their children.” The pioneers were Sister Janet Stamm and Sister Delrita Glaser from Kentucky and Sister Jane McHugh and Sister Margaret Mary Scott from California.
Sisters Judith Averbeck and Marge Mouch, of Covington, Kentucky were among the sisters who served in Africa. Sister Judith taught at the all-girls secondary school where the SND formation house was located. “I always dreamed of being a missionary in Africa,” she says. “After teaching for 38 years at Notre Dame Academy in Covington, Kentucky where I taught biology and chemistry, I was ready for a change. This was when our sisters in Uganda were ready to begin a secondary school for girls leaving our St. Julie Primary School to further young women’s education. At the time, girls graduating from St. Julie Primary School had little to no opportunity for further education.”
Sister Judith says women in Africa have traditionally been totally subservient to men, particularly in less developed areas where a man can have as many wives as he can support (in reality, as many as he wants). “Women do all the work in the village – subsistence farming, obtaining water, cooking, hut maintenance, childcare, etc.,” she explains. “When I arrived in Africa, a woman was expected to kneel when meeting a man.”
She continues, “Violence against women is widespread in Africa, especially sexual violence. A husband is even expected to beat his wife on occasion. A woman appeared on our doorstep one night, horribly wounded by acid thrown in her face by her husband. Another came to us to save her young daughter whom the father wanted to sacrifice in a witchcraft ritual. I was amazed to learn that curses and witchcraft still play a significant part in their lives, and child sacrifice was a reality. As our parish priest says: ‘You come to church in the morning and go to the witchdoctor in the evening.’”
Almost half of Uganda’s population is under age 15. The typical life of a girl in Uganda means heavy chores and care of younger siblings; some primary schooling if possible; sexual experience at an early age, followed by early marriage; and assumption of responsibilities at home.
Sister Judith says the first step in breaking the abuse cycle is removing the young person from village life. Hence, boarding schools are the rule. Good educational courses, books, and now TV and the internet are beginning to broaden minds. Winning the students’ confidence is the next slow and
- Sister Judith Averbeck, Covington, KY
